498 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1891. 



'I wail because I wish to go to my deceased mother's land' (Hades); 

 whereupon the Great- august- deity said: 'Thou shalt not dwell in this 

 land,' and deigned to expel me with a divine expulsioD. It is, there- 

 fore, solely with the thought of taking leave of thee that I have as- 

 cended hither." Then they swore to each other from opposite banks 

 of the tranquil river of heaven, and from the mist of the breath of 

 each various new deities were born. Two of these are remarkable 

 for their names, which were, His-augustness-truly-conqueror-I-conquer- 

 conquering-swift-heavenly-great-great-ears, and Her-augustness-priu- 

 cess-of-the-island-of-theofiBng. 



MYTH OF THE SUN-GODDESS. 



We now come to the great and most interesting myth of the Sun- 

 goddess. From it may be traced the origin and significance of many 

 customs still followed in Japan, and the meaning of the myth itself is 

 a subject worthy of speculation and research. Susano performed many 

 wicked acts and caused mucli destruction to fields and watercourses.* 

 In heaven he broke a hole in the roof of the weaving room where the 

 Sun-goddess and other goddesses were at work weaving the garments 

 of the deities. He let fall into their midst a heavenly horse which he 

 had flayed. This caused a great commotion among them and Ama- 

 terasu retired into a cave and closed the entrance with a stone. The 

 plain of high heaven was ol)Scured and darkness reigned over the 

 earth. Then the eight hundred myriadt deities assembled in the dry, 

 stony bed of the tranquil river of heaven to devise a means to entice 

 the goddess from the cave. Various plans were proposed, but Omoki- 

 kane-no-kami was a great thinker, and his plan was followed. So they 

 made a mirror of iron from the mine of heaven, in shape like the sun, 

 and a string of five hundred curved jewels eight feet in length, and 

 pulled up by its roots a Gleyera Japoniea with five hundred branches, 

 ui)on which they hung the mirror and the string of beads and oflerings 

 of white and blue cloth. They then resorted to divination by means 

 of a foreleg of a buck placed in a fire of cherry bark, and examined 

 the crack x^roduced. Then the deity Ama-no-futo-dama-no-niikoto took 

 the tree with its offering in his hands and recited liturgies, while 

 another played on a bamboo flute and another on a kind of harp made 

 by placing six bows with their strings upward,! and others kept time 

 by striking two x)ieces of wood together. Bonfires were lighted, and a 

 deity known as ITsume, the Heavenly-alarming-female, placed a circular 

 box or sounding board before the cave and danced upon it as though 



* From the narrative one would suppose that Japan was inhabited at this myth- 

 ical period by people wlio cultivated tlie soil, marked ont fields, etc. The story of 

 the eight-headed ser]>ent and the old couple with eijiiht children (page 500) and many 

 other allusions lead to the same conclusion. 



t The number means a great many. 



t Doubtless the origin of the koto. 



